The world could fight climate change and improve women's health by providing contraception to 200 million women worldwide who want contraceptives but can't get them, the British medical journal, The Lancet, said this week.

"Meeting this unmet need could slow high rates of population growth, thereby reducing demographic pressure on the environment," the lead editorial in this week's edition of the journal says.

It cites an August study from the London School of Economics that concluded family planning is five times cheaper than conventional green technologies to combat climate change.

The editorial also calls for a shift in the climate change discussion "to a more human-based, rights-based" approach, and cites a "deplorable lack of financial investment and political will" on the contraception issue.